Symposium 2018: Experiences Elevated

Symposium 2018: Experiences Elevated

Last week’s Sitecore Symposium 2018 in Orlando lived up to its promise to “Elevate the Experience”.

We connected with attendees in new, more meaningful ways than ever before — elevating the typical Symposium experience with a larger purpose that is now reaching beyond the conference.

As always, Sitecore delivered exciting announcements like an agreement to acquire Stylelabs, and any number of product advancements. But technology and business news were just the beginning.

New SickKids Fundraiser

Sitecore and Cannondale also introduced a first for Symposium: a fundraiser for SickKids Foundation to support the health and wellbeing of children. Their mission called Arke to action.

We connected the keynote presentation of our client, Cannondale, and the SickKids fundraiser to accomplish our larger goal — and created an experience with the bikes and new technology on the expo floor.

In collaboration with Sitecore and Cannondale, we introduced the “ride the experience” booth to raise money for SickKids and experience a sample of technology coming to Cannondale dealers. And to keep it fun, we held a drawing for an awesome Cannondale bike!

“Ride the Experience” Promotion Raises $50k+

Adding up the gifts of Sitecore matching every 3-minute bike ride with a $25 donation plus our bike giveaway sweepstakes and fundraising campaign, the conference donated well over $50,000 to SickKids. Thanks to all who made time to visit our booth, ride for SickKids, and register for the Arke + Cannondale “ride the experience” sweepstakes.

As a bonus, we used Sitecore xDB to track all the offline interactions happening on the showroom floor, like visiting the booth and riding the bikes, to the online interactions like using the conference apps, to create a marketer’s dashboard showing how those activities contributed donations to SickKids.

Arke’s dashboards displayed realtime visualizations, including at-a-glance tracking of fundraising and social media buzz, as well as measurement of how the conference as a whole was moving through the fundraising “journey”. This was measured similarly to a conventional “buyer journey,” with phases like awareness, convert, nurture, close and advocate.

These visualizations were an interesting way to see how dashboards can help us understand our customers’ journeys as they are happening, and helped drive (or pedal to) a great outcome for SickKids. If time got away from you, don’t worry. There’s still time to donate; just click here.

As announced during the closing keynote on Thursday, Kyle Tilley from Joyce Meyer Ministries won the Cannondale bike.

Arke Client Success Shared on Stage

Six Arke presentations and client success stories were shared from the stage (See Vacation.com, Stanley Engineered Fastening, Cannondale, Wyanoke). That’s our highest number yet. We’ve received so many requests for these presentations; highlights will be available soon. Stay tuned! Arke’s technical crew also shared amazing insights into technologies and techniques for things like automated deployments and cutting-edge development leveraging Node.js.

Everyone on our team came away with a unique perspective, pumped about new learning in technology, strategy, and customer experience. We’ll be passing along their insights in the weeks ahead via our blog, webinars, and user groups.

What stands out most to me is the amazing alignment between Sitecore and the business community it serves.

Sitecore and the community share a rock solid commitment to customer experience. This year, that combined strength was elevated to a new level with an amazing effort to support a worthy cause. We’re grateful to be part of this wicked-smart community pioneering the future of UX together.

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Eric Stoll co-founded Atlanta-based Arke in 2005. Today he serves as CEO of Arke with responsibility for the strategic direction of the company, execution of its growth plans, and overall operations. A graduate of the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo, he previously worked for Turner Broadcasting Systems, Mindex Technologies, and Auragen Communications.